Canada - World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe

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Health systems in transition Canada
Table 5.2
Characteristics of recipients of government-subsidized home care in Canada,
1994–1995 and 2003
1994–95 2003
Canadian population receiving subsidized home care, 18 and over (%) 2.5 2.7
Female (%) 32.7 34.6
Social assistance as main source of income (%) 38.9 33.8
Average number of days in hospital in past year 13.4 8.6
Average age in years 64.9 62.0
Source: Wilkins (2006).
Similar to other high-income countries, older frail Canadians are the
recipients of most facility- and home-based long-term care. In most provinces,
long-term care has increasingly been integrated into geographically-based
health care system through RHAs, and provincial ministries of health generally
have a division responsible for long-term care. There are also a number of
private services and accommodation, particularly in larger urban centres, that
can be purchased by older Canadians and their families.
5.9 Services for informal carers
Each province and territory has its own policies and programmes for informal
caregivers generally as part of the package of home care services and benefits
provided by the particular P/T government. Since 2002, the federal government
has provided tax credits for eligible caregivers. In response to the work
completed by the national Secretariat on Palliative and End-of-Life Care (2001–
2007), the Government of Canada introduced the Compassionate Care Benefit,
which offers workers six weeks paid leave from their employment to support
family members who are in the final six months of life. The Compassionate
Care Benefit is part of the Employment Insurance Programme and is, therefore,
not available to non-standard employees and the self-employed. 2
Consequently, the Compassionate Care Benefit is limited in its support of
unpaid carers (Flagler & Dong, 2010; Williams et al., 2011). Recent estimates of
the economic value of unpaid caregivers reveal the extent to which home-based
long-term care depends on volunteerism (Hollander, Guiping & Chappell, 2009).
However, researchers as well as caregiver advocacy groups have questioned the
2 Although some of these benefits have recently been extended to the self-employed on a voluntary basis, enrolment
has been low because only a tiny percentage of the self-employed have been willing to pay the premiums.